HubSpot Lead Status: How to Define, Automate and Report on It

What is lead status in HubSpot?

Lead status is a default HubSpot property that records where a lead is in the sales follow-up process: whether anyone has reached out yet, whether they’ve connected, and whether the lead turned into a deal or was ruled out. It exists on both contacts and companies, and it’s a dropdown you can edit.

HubSpot describes lead status as the sub-stages of the Sales Qualified Lead lifecycle stage. That’s the right way to think about it. Lifecycle stage says what kind of relationship you have with someone. Lead status says what sales is doing about it this week. If you want the full picture of lifecycle stages first, read our guide to HubSpot lifecycle stages. This page is about the second property.

On contacts, the default values at the time of writing are:

• New
• Open
• In Progress
• Open Deal
• Unqualified
• Attempted to Contact
• Connected
• Bad Timing

You don’t have to keep them. Most portals we review either use all eight with no shared understanding of what separates “Open” from “In Progress”, or ignore the property entirely. Both are fixable.

Why lead status goes stale

Lead status is usually wrong for one simple reason: it depends on reps updating it by hand, and nothing reminds them or checks.

Here’s a familiar pattern. A rep gets a new demo request on Monday, calls twice, leaves a voicemail, sends an email, and then gets busy with a deal that’s closing. The lead status still says New. Two weeks later the marketing manager pulls a report of “New” leads to see who hasn’t been contacted, sees this record, and asks why nobody followed up. Someone did. The property just never changed.

The other common causes:

• Values that were never defined. If “Open” and “In Progress” mean different things to different reps, the report splits the same situation across two values.
• No exit from Unqualified or Bad Timing. The record sits there forever, and marketing never gets it back.
• Contradictions with lifecycle stage. A Customer with lead status New, or an MQL with lead status Open Deal. Usually one property is automated and the other is manual, so they drift apart.
• A second system doing the same job. If your Sales Hub portal also uses the leads object, reps may be updating lead stages there while the lead status property sits untouched.

Write a definition for every value

Before you change any settings, write one line for each value that answers three things: what puts a lead into this status, what the rep is expected to do, and what moves it out.

A working set for a B2B team with inbound demo requests might look like this:

• New: assigned to a rep, no outreach logged yet. Rep makes first contact within the agreed response time.
• Attempted to Contact: at least one call or email logged, no conversation yet. Rep continues the agreed number of attempts, then moves to Unqualified (no response) or Bad Timing.
• Connected: a real two-way conversation has happened. Rep qualifies and either creates a deal or rules the lead out.
• Open Deal: a deal exists. Lead status stops changing; the deal pipeline takes over.
• Unqualified: not a fit. A reason is recorded and the record leaves sales follow-up.
• Bad Timing: a fit, but not now. A follow-up date is recorded.

Notice what’s missing. “Open” and “In Progress” were dropped because, for this team, they didn’t describe anything that New, Attempted to Contact and Connected didn’t already cover. Fewer values with sharp definitions beat more values with fuzzy ones.

To change the options, go to Settings > Properties, choose the contact object, and open the Lead status property. Before removing an option, check the Usages tab, which shows where the property is used, and update any workflows, segments or reports that filter on the old value. Records that already hold a removed value should be moved to a current one first.

Record why a lead was unqualified

The Unqualified value tells you a lead was ruled out. It doesn’t tell you why, and “why” is what marketing needs.

Add a separate dropdown property, something like “Unqualified reason”, with a short list: wrong company size, no budget, competitor, student or job seeker, no response after the agreed attempts, duplicate. Make it required when a rep sets Unqualified. You can do this with a conditional property on the record, or by checking it in a workflow and creating a task for the owner when it’s blank.

Three months later this property answers questions the status alone can’t. If a third of unqualified leads came from one paid campaign and were mostly students, that’s a targeting problem, not a sales problem.

What should be automated?

Automate the transitions that follow a clear event, and leave judgment calls to reps. Status changes that depend on logged activity are easy to automate. Deciding a lead isn’t a fit is not.

Workflows that update CRM properties need a Professional or Enterprise subscription. These are the updates we most often automate:

1. Set New when an owner is assigned. If your routing workflow assigns the contact owner, the same workflow can set lead status to New with an Edit record action. That gives every routed lead a clean starting point.
2. Move New to Attempted to Contact when outreach is logged. HubSpot maintains properties such as Last contacted and Number of sales activities. A workflow can watch for those changing while the status is still New.
3. Set Open Deal when a deal is created. A deal-based workflow can update associated contacts, or a contact workflow can trigger on the number of associated deals.
4. Flag leads that sit too long. If a lead is still New after your response window, send an internal notification or create a task. HubSpot’s Lead response time property records how long the current owner took to make the first qualifying engagement, which is useful for reporting on this.
5. Return Bad Timing leads on a date. When a rep sets Bad Timing with a follow-up date, a workflow can reset the status and notify the owner on that date, or move the contact into a nurture segment in the meantime.

Keep automation in one place. If three workflows each set lead status under slightly different conditions, you’ll get flicker: one sets Connected, another resets it to Attempted to Contact because a property changed. Our HubSpot workflow audit guide covers how to find workflows that overwrite each other.

Keep lead status and lifecycle stage consistent

Lead status only makes sense while a record is in sales follow-up. Agree a few rules and enforce them with workflows:

• When a contact becomes SQL (or MQL, if sales works MQLs directly), set lead status to New if it’s empty.
• When a deal is created, set Open Deal.
• When a contact becomes a Customer, clear the lead status, or leave it at Open Deal if your reports need it. Pick one and document it.
• When a lead is marked Unqualified, decide where it goes: back to a nurture stage, or to Other.

That last decision matters. If Unqualified leads stay at SQL, your SQL count inflates and your conversion rates fall for no real reason. Moving them back to an earlier lifecycle stage requires clearing the lifecycle stage first, which the lifecycle stages guide explains.

Lead status or the leads object?

If you have Sales Hub Professional or Enterprise, you may also have HubSpot’s leads object. It’s a separate record type, associated with a contact (and usually its company), that lives in the sales workspace and moves through its own lead pipeline. At the time of writing the default lead stages are New, Attempting, Connected, Qualified and Disqualified.

The leads object does some of the work that lead status relies on reps to do. In the pipeline automation settings, HubSpot can move a lead to Attempting when the owner sends an email, makes a call or logs a message, and to Connected when the lead replies, a call is logged as Connected, or a meeting is completed. Qualified and Disqualified are set by the rep. You can also have HubSpot create a lead automatically when a contact reaches chosen lifecycle stages, and create a follow-up lead after disqualification for reasons you select.

So which should you use? A rough guide:

• If your reps work from the sales workspace and prospect actively, the leads object is usually the better tool. It’s built for that workflow and updates itself from activity.
• If your team is small, works from contact records, or you’re not on Sales Hub Professional, lead status is simpler and does the job.
• If you use both, decide which one reps update and which one reports read from. Don’t assume HubSpot keeps them in step for you. Check what your portal actually does, and if you need lead status to mirror lead stage, build that deliberately.

Running both without a decision is the worst option. You end up with a lead marked Connected in the workspace and a contact marked New on the record, and two managers reading two different reports.

Reporting on lead status

A lead status report is only as good as the definitions behind it, but once those are in place, a few views are worth building:

• Leads by status and owner. A snapshot of who has how many leads at New. A large pile at New for one rep is the first sign of a capacity or routing problem.
• Time in New. Using Owner assigned date and Lead response time, you can see how quickly leads get a first touch, by source or by rep.
• Unqualified by reason and source. The reason property from earlier makes this possible.
• Bad Timing with past-due follow-up dates. Leads someone promised to come back to.

Avoid reading lead status as a funnel. A lead moves New, Attempted to Contact, Connected, Open Deal in sequence on a good day, but plenty skip steps. Use it to see what’s stuck now, and use deal and lifecycle data for conversion rates.

A quick checklist

• Every lead status value in use has a written entry rule, expected action and exit.
• Unused default values have been removed, with references updated first.
• Unqualified has a required reason property.
• Bad Timing has a follow-up date and something that acts on it.
• Status updates that follow logged activity are automated in one workflow, not several.
• Rules exist for how lead status and lifecycle stage relate, and nothing contradicts them.
• If the leads object is in use, the team knows which one is the source of truth.

If lead status is one symptom of a broader follow-up problem, our lead routing guide for HubSpot covers the step that comes just before it.